April 15 – This week explosions and smoke billowed from a steelmaking district in besieged Mariupol, where dwindling Ukrainian forces have holed up as Russia seeks to take full control of its largest city yet.
The Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, one of Europe’s largest metallurgical plants, has become an aptly apocalyptic redoubt for Ukrainian forces who are outgunned, outnumbered and surrounded seven weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine.
East of the South Harbor, which was devastated by weeks of bombing, the plant is located in an industrial area overlooking the Sea of Azov and covers more than 11 square kilometers (4.25 sq mi) with countless buildings, blast furnaces and railway tracks.
“Azovstal factory is a huge space with so many buildings that the Russians…(Ukrainian armed forces) just can’t find,” said Oleh Zhdanov, a Kyiv-based military analyst.
“That’s why they (the Russians) started talking about trying a chemical attack, that’s the only way to smoke them out,” Zhdanov said.
Ukraine has said it is reviewing unconfirmed information that Russia may have used chemical weapons in Mariupol. Russian-backed separatists have denied using chemical weapons. Continue reading
In peacetime, the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works pumped 4 million tons of steel, 3.5 million tons of pig iron and 1.2 million tons of rolled steel annually.
Like the city’s other Illich steel and iron plants, Azovstal is owned by Metinvest, the group controlled by billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man.
A deputy commander of the Russian separatists told Russian state television on Monday that Moscow has taken 80% of the port, but resistance continues and all Ukrainian forces have tried “to withdraw towards the Azovstal factory”.
He described the factory as a “fortress in a city”.
The city’s defenders include Ukrainian marines, motorized brigades, a National Guard brigade and the Azov Regiment, a militia created by far-right nationalists and later incorporated into the National Guard.
It is the Azov regiment, whose destruction is one of Moscow’s war aims, that is prominently associated with Azovstal, and one of its founders, Andriy Biletskiy, has dubbed it “the fortress of the Azovs.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin is calling the invasion a “special operation” to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine,” but Ukraine and the West say Russia has launched an unprovoked war of aggression.
“Azov is actually on the territory of Azovstal… These are huge areas with workshops that cannot be destroyed from the air, which is why the Russians use heavy bombs,” said Sergiy Zgurets, a military analyst.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that more than 1,000 soldiers from Ukraine’s 36th Naval Brigade, including 162 officers, surrendered in Mariupol, although Ukraine has not confirmed this.
Ukraine’s presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovych later said that members of the 36th Naval Brigade managed to join the Azov regiment in a “highly risky manoeuvre”.
“The 36th Brigade avoided being blown to pieces and now has serious additional opportunities, essentially a second chance,” he said.
Due to the lack of mobile phone reception and internet in the city, information is sparse. Ukraine has tightly controlled things like troop levels that could jeopardize its defenses.
Biletskiy von Asov told Ukrainian news site NV on March 20 that Ukraine has a total of 3,000 fighters defending the city against up to 14,000 Russians.
HARD TO OCCUPY
The private US satellite company Maxar was able to look at the raging battles from space on Tuesday.
“Smoke and fire were observed from a number of buildings in the western and eastern parts of the city, as well as in and near the Azovstal Iron and Steel Factory – the site of ongoing fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces,” it said.
An EU security source told Reuters it was too difficult to say how long the Ukrainians could hold out and also difficult for Russia to occupy the whole city because of the industrial complexes. “Under the steel factory there are underground tunnel systems.”
“Mariupol is very important to Putin because after a victory there (and the surrender of Azov forces) he can claim that the ‘denazification’ process is successful,” the source added.
An assistant to the mayor of Mariupol on Wednesday said Russia plans to celebrate the victory in the city on May 9, the day Moscow marks the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II with an annual parade in Red Square.
Zhdanov, the military analyst, said he sees little chance of external Ukrainian forces breaking the Russian siege.
“How many supplies the defenders have and how long they can hold out is unclear. But they have no other way out. They are surrounded on all sides, they have to stand to the end. If they give in, they won’t.” be spared,” he said.
Reporting by Natalia Zinets; Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Grant McCool